Category Archives: Online Marketing

How Lead Generation Works

So I know you have all been waiting for an update on what has been happening with the efforts I have been putting into lead generation. Well your wait is at an end. Now listen I have not built a list of 20,000 people in the last couple of weeks but I have done a bit of advertising to test this out and the results are in. By the way my first solo ads are just scheduled to start this week so more to come but the early results look very promising.

So far I have only mailed to my LinkedIn connections and to be honest these connections are not very targeted. They are business associates and friends but most are not into Internet Marketing, Building Lists or Lead Generation and yet of about 400 emails sent I got a pretty solid response.

I would estimate that about 75 of those 400 are targeted to Internet Marketing / Biz Ops. Of those 75, 30 are now on my list and 6 have signed up for my Primary offer. Frankly that is pretty awesome. I have already earned almost $500.00 – net profit but more important to me is that I have tested the conversion on this myself and the numbers hold. Now to scale it up. But before we go there I want to take a closer look at the numbers and show you the real potential of this and where you can go with this.

Let’s use my primary business as an example. So far the six people I have involved with me are business builders. So let’s just say for the sake of argument that none of us ever does any better than what I have accomplished in the first 2 weeks of actively promoting this.

This math will blow your mind.

If I and my first six business builders only do what i have done…you know what scratch that…let’s say the results are even less than I have gotten. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we all bring in one person a week. Doesn’t sound like much does it? Honestly it is not and if you are serious this should be your lowest goal you can set. One person a week.

If each of us does just that little bit at the end of 30 days there will be 30 people in this opportunity…still no great shakes. Although each of us will have earned an additional $320.00 in pure profit. Okay I hear you…but what about my advertising costs for running solo’s? Well that is the best part! Even if you were to get such dismal results (which you won’t) you would still make a small profit. Not bad for your first 30 days in business. Now let’s look at month two.

This month we are starting with 30 people, all of which are doing the same thing…just one person a week. So in month 2 we add 120 people to our business for a total of 150 people at the end of the month. Now again still a small profit from the advertising because of the back end offer but you also must realize your are filling a forced matrix at the same time so now you have some residual coming in too. Plus now your list has over one hundred people on it.

You can obviously see where we are going with this. Now let’s say in month three, now that we have a bit of cash flow we scale our efforts up a bit and now instead of bringing one person in a week we are bringing 2 people a week. This is how you build a business. This is how I built my pizza shop and this is how I built my cleaning business. Both were madly successful. Had I used the same approach upon entering the online arena I dare say I would be well retired by now.

In any case I digress…at the end of month even sticking with the 1 person a week scenario there are now 600 new people coming into the business by the end of the month for a total of 750 people in the organization.

No Pie In The Sky – Lead Generation

Now for those of you that are more experienced you know not everyone is going to do those numbers. Some will do nothing…as usual…they will be the people that cry that nothing ever works except this time even they will make money because as you will also be aware…there are some that will go get 100 people all by themselves and so the numbers even out. More importantly because this is a forced matrix the efforts of each and all are going in the same direction so all benefit.

Please make no mistake, this is not an invitation to the slacker’s to get involved with us. In fact we would prefer you did not. If you honestly think with a complete system in place that does all the heavy lifting for you that you still can’t manage even one person a week then keep your day job.

**Note – The last paragraph is not meant to discourage but the simple fact is that we can show you how to do it but you still have to DO IT!!

I am not trying to be crass or uncaring but if you can’t find one person a week with this system then you are not using this system and you wasted your time and money. I just ask that you don’t waste our time and our money. We want to use our efforts with people that are engaged not people looking for a free ride. That’s what HYIP’s and Cyclers are for and they will be very happy to steal your money.

This blog is about List Building, Lead Generation and the reality that you will have to do something to get the results. Granted you don’t have to do much but you do have to do something. If it was as simple as planting my flag and the money would just somehow miraculously come to me then all would be living the dream. I have fallen into this trap too many times to do it again.

There is no free lunch!

Back on point. Even if we go with the meager test numbers and I never scale it up from there the math says I will have a list of over 1000 people at the end of year one. Again the numbers say that each of those people is worth about a dollar a month to me. So that is a thousand dollars a month coming in right there!

Would an extra grand every month change things in your life?

If so pay attention. This blog is not about showing you how to push a magic button to make a million dollars in a month. It is a blog to show you how to build the magic button and that button is your list. In the meantime you can make a ton of money Ifyou have a converting offer. If you do have that converting offer already then that’s awesome but if you don’t then you should have a look at our offer cause it converts like mad.

Check it out. It costs you nothing to look and if you have been looking for ways to build your list then the free ebook is worth it. To get you ebook on Earning 100K a year with Solo Ads Click Here.

Remember it’s free. For real…FREE! What you do with it is up to you.

I could go on all day about the numbers but I will assume all here know how to do math so you can run the numbers further out for yourself. The simple fact is this – if you want to be successful online you need a list. To build that list you must have a compelling offer that will get your prospects attention and you must have a converting offer. If you want to search for the next couple fo years like I did for an offer that converts…well…carry on. If you are tired of the hype then start doing math. Marketing is Math!!!

So here we are…finally. It seems like this setup took forever but I realize it is only a few weeks. There were quite a few details to make sure were completed before I started mailing. I needed to make sure all my links worked, tracking was in place etc…Now this probably sounds very confusing especially for someone new to this. In reality the simplest thing to do, at least for me, was to spend an extra $30.00 and have an expert set it up for me. Now all that is complete and I am ready to start my first mailing. From here on out we are either going to see results or not. I ran a small test campaign over the past few days and the results are very promising and this was not even targeted traffic I mailed to.

The Plan – Lead Generation

If you have not already done so then go to http://liveyourdreamlife.org and download your free copy of our guide to earning 100K a year with solo ads. Once you have this tutorial it will be much easier to follow along and more important this is your map to duplicating what we are doing here.

This report is chock full of valuable information and is a complete strategy for building your list in the least amount of time possible and in the most efficient way possible. Most important is that once you have this information you will have your complete roadmap to the “Internet Lifestyle”. I mean let’s face it…isn’t that what we are chasing?

Freedom to work on our own terms

More time to spend with family

traveling to exotic places

new homes and nice cars

We all have our own idea of what that lifestyle looks like. The point is that with this system you can achieve it. We give you the plan. If you implement it your results will be the same as the results we achieve. How do I know? Simple the guy that showed this to me, Dale Calvert, is very successful. Google his name and you will understand you are dealing with someone that actually does this and is qualified to lead.

I have always been a firm believer that if you want what somebody has then you need to do what they do. Well, Dale has laid it all out in a simple plan and even gives you the exact resources he uses. Start there. Once you have your feet wet then you will discover many other resources for solo ads. In fact the additional resources I have found will be compiled in a list on this site.

In any case as I said I ran a small test campaign and mailed to 500 people. These were not targeted prospects interested in internet marketing, these were just regular people that were in my personal contacts list on Gmail. The results were pretty powerful. I had about a 5% optin rate, which is not great but again it was not targeted and this was free traffic. Of those 20 optins though I have at least 4 people that are getting started with MCA. Not bad for a test since each of those 4 people is worth $80.00 to me. This is simple math. If I can make an extra $320.00 in a couple of days without even trying imagine what will happen when this is going to people that are actually interested in starting or expanding their own online efforts?

Running Solo Ads – Lead Generation

So to recap, we have built the lead generation funnel, we have set up our autoresponder to make the whole process work automatically and we have tested our links to make sure all is working properly. Everything checks out so now we are ready to send solo ads. There is an extensive list in the the eBook I am giving away “Earn 100K Per Year With Solo Ads”. Feel free to start with these. This list is 147 of the best solo ad sources that Dale uses. Again if you want what they have then do what they do.

In addition I have also compiled a list of solo ad sources that I will test as time goes buy. The ones that proof credible and effective I will add to the list so stay tuned for more.

Tomorrow or Saturday I will select my first vendor’s. I intend to run 2 or 3 small mailings to spread it among a few different provider’s. I will check back in with the results in a few days. Till next time…

Working With A Budget – Lead Generation

Okay so I did not properly budget out of the gate so everything is going to take a little longer than expected with regard to Lead Generation. Maybe saying I did not budget properly is being a little too harsh. The fact is that I am starting over and so do not have the budget of thousands of dollars to spend to develop my business. I am just like everyone else now, starting with not much and budgeting the best I can. The fact remains though that if I want to grow this I am going to have to invest some money. This idea that you can start and grow a business with no investment is pure folly. Now that is not to say you need to mortgage the farm to start a business, just saying that you are going to have to spend some money. If you are not willing to then don’t even get in the game. You will just lose you ass and blame others for your failure. So having said all that let me tell you where I am.

Honestly I realize now that this is the most critical part and it is the part I have always tried to shortcut. Don’t skimp here, if it takes you a few extra days or even weeks it does not matter in the big picture. If you set it up right the first time then you do not ever have to go back and fix it. It literally becomes a one and done. So what have I been doing the last couple of weeks?

Well first of all I have to work within my budget which as I stated is not what it used to be. This is not necessarily bad news, especially for someone starting out with no money. If it works for me it will work for you. Period! So I guess we will see what happens when you are starting with a budget of literally fifty to a hundred bucks a week and not every week. I suspect as I have already seen that this takes a bit longer than I had thought. Once I generate a bit of cash flow I will be able to grow much quicker. So again what have I been doing?

The first thing I wanted to make sure of was that I had my lead funnel set up properly. So I did all that but let’s face it we are in this to make money. I needed to find some real “no-brainer” opportunities. It is actually surprising how many great companies are out there once you start looking. So I wanted to make sure I had something of real value to offer to people that subscribe to my list. All that costs money. The getting started part I mean. There is no way around it, you are going to lose some money out of the gate. Not really lose but you have to put that money out there in front and then look for the return on the back end. So I got involved with Motor Club of America (MCA). I figure that anyone that has owned a car or owns a car and has been broken down on the side of the road will see the value in MCA. This creates an immediate market and a sustainable one. Even if I am not making money right away with MCA…it is still a service I need and would buy anyway so why not set up a business where you can get paid for what you were going to do anyway? See? I am going to do this with several businesses. I think it makes sense. I know there are no shiny buttons and flashy phony sales letters but I believe if I provide a product that people need and are going to spend money on anyway then it is not too far a stretch to encourage them to see if they can’t make a few bucks in the process.

This process started from the beginning. My first goal in building this project is to make sure that whatever businesses are attached to it make sense to people. The only precedent I have for what makes sense to people is what makes sense to me. To me, MCA makes sense. I spend $19.95 per month for a service I need anyway, plus all the additional perks you get in the process. Anyway I pay $19.95 per month, get a service I need and get paid $80.00 every time I introduce this to another person…driver. Think about how many customers and potential business partners you have in a country with 350 million people. Plus this is in Canada too. So I spend $19.95 per month and get paid $80.00 for every new referral. Essentially I need to bring in a new referral every 4 months to break even…lol…are you shitting me?…lol. I don’t care how limited you think your skills are I think you can recruit one person every 4 months. You say you can’t…really? Think about that because this is your break even point. Every person you bring to this after the first person is pure profit.

Simplicity In Online Marketing

That is what I like about this…it appeals to my need to be conservative with my money. I am starting completely over and in the process of building my list of subscriber’s I want to earn some money for value provided. I can provide a solid service from a company that has been in business more than 75 years and get paid for it while my break even or at risk money is very low. Still it is costing some money.

To set up the whole sales and lead funnel will cost me about $140.00. I have spent about $100.00 of that to this point. I need to do one more thing on Friday that will complete the funnel. …I am not off the hook yet. That was the easy part. Now comes the part where I really need to take a chance. Starting next week I am going to begin running solo ads. I will tell you who I use and what the results are. I also will be testing different squeeze pages over time and all that fun stuff but for now I am going to use the systems in place and run with it. My budget for the solo ads is about a hundred dollars a week for the first few weeks. Hopefully if all goes as planned then the budget will increase dramatically over the next few months. I will keep you posted on what is working and what is not.

That’s it for now but in a quick synopsis…all should be set up by the end of the week and ready to roll next week. I just need to make sure my budget is secure. Till next time…

Web Hosting for Lead Generation

So as I said last time I want to try and stay in order as Lead Generation and building your business can be confusing, so today we are going to talk about Hosting Companies.

Take my word for it when I say that nothing is more important than picking a reliable hosting company. That said there are literally hundreds if not thousands of companies that provide hosting for websites but not all are created equal. If you have done anything online you know how important having a good hosting company is. If you are brand new let me provide you with a scenario that just happened to me. I feel it will really shed light on the importance of reliable support.

When I first got involved in internet marketing I bought this “Push a button and you’ll get rich” system…lol (They do not exist). Anyway I wound up using a company named CoolHandle Hosting by default as that was the hosting company the guy that sold me the product had worked a deal with. Little did I know just how important dealing with a reputable company would become for my business.

Fast forward two years and it all comes home to roost. About a month ago I received an email from CoolHandle telling me that my account had been suspended. This is the third or fourth time this has happened. Apparently someone hacked into my account and sent a gazillion emails from my server. Thing is that I do not have any email accounts on this hosting and I have checked everything on my end and they are not getting in through my end. They are getting in through CoolHandle somehow but CoolHandle does not want the responsibility for it. So they keep passing the buck. Meanwhile almost a month later my sites are still suspended and I can not get a response from CoolHandle that addresses the issue.

The fact is that I should have switched from this company long ago but it is a pain in the ass to move sites after they are built and I did not want to hassle with it. Anyway, finally I am forced to do something about it but now instead of just having to buy hosting I also have to pay my tech guy to move all of my websites to the new hosting. If I would have done my research properly I could have saved myself hundreds of dollars paid to someone to move all of my domains and sites.

So water under the bridge but I can tell you that nothing is more pleasing than when I have an issue I can pick up the phone and speak to a live human being. See most of these hosting companies do not even have a way for you to contact them if something does go wrong, except by email. Now in the case of CoolHandle they do have a phone number but just to their sales team. When you try to get to tech support the only way to reach them is by email. My experience has been that if this is the only way to contact a company there is a reason they do not want to take calls and it is not because their service is sooo good. Quite the opposite, it is because their service sucks and they want a barrier between them and their pissed off customer’s.

How To Spot A Reliable Hosting Company

Well as I said, having a phone number is critical but more importantly is having a phone number to someone that is technically able and willing to assist you. There are only two companies with these credentials I would recommend using.

The first company that meets this basic criteria is Host Gator. I have actually been working with them for quite a while now so, fortunately, the bulk of what I have done is already with them but as I said there are several sites that will have to be moved. In fact it is happening today.

Let me give you the exact same scenario as it would play out with Host Gator. My account gets suspended and I call Host Gator on the phone where I am immediately greeted to the option of speaking to someone in sales or tech support. I choose tech support. When I am transferred it is not to a recording but to a live person that actually knows what they are talking about and more important are eager to help.

I explain the issue and while I am on the phone the issue is resolved. In fact they will not let you get off the phone until the issue isresolved.Ten minutes or so later I am on about doing my business and my sites are fixed. No going back and forth with people in another country that do not really care whether your business functions or not. It does not take a month for the issue to be addressed. No gatekeeper’s telling you they have no record of the support ticket you sent in. No excuses!Just results.

Think this is no big deal? Think again. I have literally wasted hours calling CoolHandle and writing support tickets to CoolHandle and still a month later am no closer to resolving the issue than I was before I contacted them. How frustrated do you think you would be in that circumstance. All that energy and time wasted.

Reliable Web-Hosting is Critical To Your Online Success.

Bottom line is that if your sites are not functioning properly it will not matter how many links you build or how pretty your site is or how good your offer is because no one will see it. This is your business. Imagine if you own a pizza shop and you are open for business but there is no way to get in the store as the front door does not work. Think you are going to make any money. What if your landlord (Hosting Company) refused to fix the door? Simply you will go out of business. Maybe it takes a week or a month or a year, depending on how deep your pockets are but sooner or later you will go out of business or give up in frustration.

There is also another option though I have not used them for hosting so I can not say how good their service is but as a company I can vouch for them and that is GoDaddy.com. Now in the interest of full disclosure I have never used GoDaddy for hosting but I have bought numerous domains from them and their service has always been top-notch. I see no reason why their hosting would not be top-notch also. But…as I said I have not used their hosting so make sure you do your own research here.

Cloud Hosting Benefits

Cloud Hosting is a relatively new service that I have just started to investigate. Again the problem I have run into in my initial foray into this is that the support sucks! No phone numbers to tech support means that every time you have an issue you need to send an email and god knows when they get back to you. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to take three days emailing back and forth to fix a five minute issue and yet that seems to be the case when their is no phone number. I don’t know why but that is what it is. All these technological breakthroughs were supposed to make it easier to communicate but that depends on the level of professionalism that the other company is bringing to the table. While email and instant messaging can speed the process this is only if the company you are dealing with actually has the desire to resolve the issue. If they do not care then it is a great wall between you and them.

In theory I love the idea of cloud hosting as each of your sites would have their own unique IP address and so if Google was looking it would not appear that all site are owned by the same person. Think building out several sites in the same niche…if Google suspects you are trying to lock up a search term they do not give any credit to the sites at all and won’t rank any of them. But if each of your sites has its own unique IP then there is no way for Google to know that they are all owned by the same person or company. This is crucial to ranking high when trying to build a network.

**As a side note, you can do the same thing with a dedicated server from Host Gator but there are certain limitations with HG that are not present with cloud hosting.

Stay tuned for more info on this as I will surely be doing more research over time. I just do not want to recommend this course until I know all the ins and outs.

So anyway there you have it. My two best reco’s for hosting with Host Gator at the top. I hope you trust me on this one as the headaches to come if you don’t are just not worth it. I learned the hard way. The right hosting company is absolutely crucial to your online success.

Building Your Sales Funnel

Hey you guys. It is 1:00 AM EST. I actually finished a major project to do with List Building a few hours ago and wanted to give you the skinny. I spent the day building my first Sales Funnel and Lead Capture Funnel. I had built squeeze pages before but this is the first time I actually planned out the process and was not just throwing darts. The Lead Capture and OTO page I built are integral to developing my list of subscriber’s.

I am inserting the link Here so you can check it out. It will give you an idea of how you want this to flow. You can also get a free eBook on Social Media Marketing. This eBook is a complete no-fluff report on developing and managing your Social Media Presence. Unless you have been living under a rock you know that Google is crazy for social and that does not look to change anytime soon.

The cool thing about taking your SEO social is that the traffic you will develop will not be subject to the will of Google and at the same time since this is what Google wants they reward you with high rankings. So goes the wisdom of a couple of SEO guys that are highly reputable and recognized. When we get into website building I will go into more detail about these authorities.

Sorry I digress…

This project took me about 7 hours to complete and that was only because I hit a couple of hitches when it came to getting the video right. Point is that if I knew what I was doing this project would have taken less than half that amount of time. Another simple fact is that I could not do this type of work on my own. I used a WordPress Theme called Optimize Press.

I have to tell you that I invested in this theme about two years ago and it has come a long way. Now granted I did not know what I know now either but this theme is amazing in its simplicity and it will allow you to set up so many different things. I realized that this is a theme designed around ways to monetize the internet. Lead Capture Pages, Sales Funnels, Lead Funnels, Product Launches, all no problem. What I did not realize is that the same theme also has a template for a membership site. There is just so much you can do with this theme and I can tell you I am only scratching the surface.

Anyway it is late and I am tired but I will definitely talk more on this topic over the next few days. Thing is I want to try and keep this in order so next we will be talking about Hosting and Domain Names.

An Online Marketing Blog

I have been told a hundred times or more that I need to focus my attention on Lead Generation. My name is Glenn Hoepfl. I placed that image of myself on this blog not out of ego but because this is what the internet lifestyle looks like to me (not there yet…lol). I began my online marketing journey a couple of years ago. I have had some successes but up until this point the “Internet Lifestyle” has eluded me. I am coming to believe it is for two reasons this success has been elusive. I can sum my conclusions up very simply…

No Mentor

No List

So I have gotten myself a mentor and am going to do exactly what he tells me to do and I will publish my progress and results here.

Lead Generation

While this blog will focus on becoming a lead generation specialist and as such, how to build your list…there is a ton of information that I will be utilizing and so I will publish all resources and systems I use. As time goes by I expect this blog will have all of the necessary tools and information to take you literally from Day 1 (complete newbie) to Lead Generation expert.

There is so much information out there on Internet Marketing. My goal is to show you from my own experience what works and what does not work. Nothing will be held back here so you will get to see the process, warts and all. I am certain I will make mistakes along the way. When I do I will let you know so you can avoid the same pitfalls.

To be honest I am not certain of the outcome but since having a mentor and building a list are about the only two things I have not tried I figure I have nothing to lose. If this works as I have been assured it will then we will all benefit and if not then at least I can not say I did not try. Fair enough?